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In this social media age, when every minutia of our lives can be voted thumbs up or down, the notion of there being too much democracy offends modern sensibilities. So conditioned are we to exalt individual choice that anyone who suggests certain policy decisions are best left to elected representatives (or gasp experts) risks the accusation of being a dread elitist.

But Britains election last week reminds us that there is, in fact, such a thing as too much democracy.

That some things should not be put up to popular vote membership in the European Union, for instance is a lesson youd think theyd have learned in Britain. The tussle over Brexit has led to political and economic instability for months. And it will now be prolonged by the surprising results of Thursdays snap general election, which wiped out Prime Minister Theresa Mays Conservative Party majority and resulted in a hung Parliament.

In 2013, when Mays predecessor, David Cameron, announced a national referendum on Britains EU membership, he hoped to settle a long-running intra-party feud over Europe. But the decision to put it up to a plebiscite was completely arbitrary. Of all issues, surely a countrys involvement in a multinational institution a 40-year relationship comprising many complex arrangements that affect everything from fisheries to security cooperation should not be determined by something so reductionist as a stay-or-go popular vote. Economists, trade experts, and security officials not to mention parliamentarians (whose job it is to understand such matters more deeply than those who elect them) all agreed that leaving the EU carried few discernible benefits, yet entailed great risks.

No matter. This country has had enough of experts, one pro-Leave politician infamously said on the eve of Brexits success.

The people that expression beloved of Third World tyrants and increasingly adopted by leaders in advanced industrial democracies got their say. The vote was purely advisory; Parliament could have ignored the result. When Britains High Court ruled that the government required parliamentary assent for a measure initiating Brexit, the tabloid Daily Mail excoriated the judges with a front-page headline screaming, ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE.

Its not just the nationalist right that has a fetish for the masses. Until 2015, the Labor Party had chosen its leaders through an electoral college that gave equal weight to the votes of elected MPs, union members, and dues-paying party members. All that changed when the party decided to let anyone register and vote online for a one-time, 3-pound fee. In swarmed over 100,000 leftist activists, many of them members of fringe parties historically opposed to Labor. They in turn propelled the hard-left backbencher Jeremy Corbyn to power.

Beneath Corbyns avuncular exterior lies an extremist, one who, from the very beginning of his political career, has expressed alarming sympathy for his countrys enemies, from the fascist Argentinian junta to the Irish Republican Army to Vladimir Putins Russia. That this man today has even a chance of becoming prime minister of the worlds fifth largest military power is clearly traceable to two instances of democratic overzealousness: the opening of the Labor leadership race to every Tom, Dick and Harry, as well as Mays unnecessary and opportunistic decision to call a snap election. Like Camerons Brexit referendum, which was disguised as serving the national interest even though its origins lay in partisan politics, Mays desire for a mandate from the people will have chaotic consequences.

The United States, and California especially, is no stranger to this plebiscitary obsession. Golden Staters waste a great deal of time and money voting on everything from plastic bags to requiring condoms on porn sets. Such democratic mania creates democratic exhaustion, discouraging citizens from participating in the elections that truly matter. In the recent special congressional election to replace Xavier Becerra, for instance, just over 10% of registered voters turned out.

This is a shame, because we live in a representative democracy, not a pure one. In that vein, its worth revisiting the words of Edmund Burke, the British MP whose elegantly brief Speech to the Electors of Bristol in 1774 remains the finest elucidation of republican government ever written. While it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents, Burke ultimately believed that Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Amidst the global populist insurgency, our duly elected representatives should depend more upon their own judgment and worry less about the uninformed opinion of the masses.

James Kirchick is author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age. He is filling in for Doyle McManus.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook

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The British election is a reminder of the perils of too much democracy - Los Angeles Times

Some animals are more equal than others.

Remorselessly attacking the media, President Donald Trump advances a worldwide culture of impunity. Demagogues and despots flourish in his long shadow: Elected ones, presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Vladimir Putin of Russia, as well as the house of Saud, use the opportunity to expand their power and crush their critics. But nowhere is the ongoing global assault on democratic norms as multi-pronged, devastating and poorly scrutinized as in India, ruled by a Hindu supremacist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In recent months, there have been a series of mob attacks on people suspected of involvement in the beef trade, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned into a volatile electoral issue in 2014. Last week, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Indias main investigative agency, raided homes and offices of the founders of NDTV, the only major TV station to remain critical of Modis government.

The ostensible cause was a criminal complaint about an unpaid bank loan, filed three days before the raid by an individual (NDTV claims that it has paid back the loan). The real reason seems to be an on-air confrontation between a NDTV anchor and the BJP national spokesperson that ended with the latters expulsion.

Intimidation of the media by the government is nothing new in India. But the flimsiness of the CBIs case against NDTV, and the swift and draconian nature of its response, point to an emboldened mood in Modis government; they reveal, too, some ingeniously hybrid methods of repression that Erdogan and Putin can only envy.

For Modis government has managed to stoke a mass hysteria against various "anti-nationals" while also deploying the governments huge machinery to facilitate and legitimate violent acts. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Indias most populous state, a hardline priest appointed by Modi, personally unleashed the "Anti-Romeo" squads, vigilante groups that punish couples guilty of Western-style public displays of affection. The BJPs ministers have been quick to defend the recent mob assaults on suspected beef traders and beefeaters and to blame their victims.

Far from condemning such officially sponsored mayhem, and affirming the rule of law, anchors on news television channels help amplify mob fury. The synergy between a jingoistic media and the governments institutions was most recently on display in the case of an Indian army major in Kashmir who had tied a civilian to the bonnet of a jeep and then paraded him through several villages for nearly five hours.

Indias hyper-nationalist new army chief, promoted above his seniors by Modi, bestowed a certificate of recommendation upon the major, and hailed his method as a necessary "innovation" in Indias war with vicious anti-nationals in Kashmir. The major himself, exonerated by an army inquiry, appeared on a private television channel to defend his blatant violation of many international norms. His act then was endorsed by talking heads in television studios and the BJPs armies of internet trolls.

The machinery of rage and outrage went into overdrive when Twitter evidently forced a BJP member of parliament to delete a tweet demanding that the novelist Arundhati Roy, a longstanding critic of Hindu chauvinism, be tied to the bonnet of a jeep. Most recently, the respected Indian academic Partha Chatterjee was hounded on television for comparing the Indian armys use of human shields in Kashmir to the brutal methods of British colonialists in India.

Modi himself assumes a regal indifference as civil society in India is steadily destroyed by his allies and supporters.He certainly doesnt have to worry much about international disapproval, or even scrutiny. The world seems too distracted by Trumps antics, and the extreme volatility they inject into political and economic realms on several continents.

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It is also true that, no matter how horrifying the news from India is, the country remains for many commentators in the West a mostly cuddly democracy and "rising" economic power. A recent article in the New York Review of Books was not untypical in this regard. "In NarendraModi, India now has dynamic leadership for the first time in many years," wrote Jessica T. Mathews, the former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. After nodding briefly to criticism of Modi for restricting civil liberties, Mathews added, offering no evidence whatsoever, that "Modi may be consolidating enough political strength to force through long-needed reforms in New Delhi."

For those who breathe the toxic atmosphere of India today, such assessments spring from a cloud cuckoo-land of fantasy. For the rapid poisoning of Indias public culture renders the question of economic reform moot. The contemporary worlds greatest experiment in democracy is dying. It is a measure of the sad and crazy times we live in that we cannot even see this tragedy.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Pankaj Mishra at pmishra24@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.net

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India's Illiberal Democracy - Bloomberg - Bloomberg

Background: Frauke Petry (left), co-chair of Germany's Alternative for Germany party, and Marine Le Pen (right), of France's National Front. | wbur.org; inset: President Trump. | Alex Brandon/AP

PARIS Widening income inequality, in the U.S. and in other developed nations, threatens democracy, just as it did in the 1930s, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says.

Trumka issued that warning in early June at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) meeting in Paris. The OECD, which represents the most-developed nations in the world, invited outside experts to discuss the state of the world economy.

The AFL-CIO leader tied it to the state of world democracy.

Please, please understand, the alternative to addressing wage stagnation and the status of working people in the global economy is not more of the same elite-dominated globalization. The alternative is an escalating crisis where the false promises of authoritarianism and racism threaten to overwhelm the democratic ideal, he said.

Trumka did not name names of authoritarians on the rise, but political scientists cite French presidential candidate Marine LePen, right wing political parties in Europe, and Russian President Vladimir Putin as examples. Some cite authoritarian tendencies in U.S. President Donald Trump. The real problem, Trumka said, is the systems tilt against workers.

Globalization has meant rising inequality, whose cause turns out to be the decline in workers share of income and wages not keeping up with productivity, he explained.

That decline is due to the decline in workers bargaining power as a result of globalization being managed in ways that pit workers against each other. Underneath all of this is the decline of the percentage of workers belonging to unions and covered by collective bargainingThis is not my explanation. This is what the OECD says in its economic outlook.

And since the yawning gap between the rich and the rest of us is worldwide, it demands worldwide policy solutions to the root causes of this low (income) growth. Added Trumka: Stop trying to marginalize the crisis of low wages and stagnant growth as merely regional, or treat it as if it were somehow inevitable rather than being the product of policy choices.

But OECD and its member nations havent changed their policies, he chided. They still make excuses for the income gap. And OECD still issues recommendations to weaken collective bargaining, lower the minimum wage and weaken unemployment insurance exactly the policies that produced the serious economic and political crisis we now face. This schizophrenia really must stop if we are to solve it.

If the OECD nations, including the U.S., dont reverse those policies, democracy is endangered because its economic underpinning is endangered, he warned.

Anti-democratic forces are able to gain ground fundamentally because ordinary people believe democracy has come to mean inequality, poverty, and rising economic insecurity. A recent Harvard University public opinion study found only 30 percent of (U.S.) people born since 1980 think democracy is necessary for a good society, and 24 percent think democracy is harmful.

This is precisely why we must not allow the policy debate to become one between neoliberals and authoritarians. We must have a humane economic vision AND a human political vision. That requires rebuilding the collective power of working people, both in the workplace and in politics, Trumka said.

In a world of global corporations and big data, of Nissan and Uber, collective power is the only form of empowerment that actually exists for ordinary people.

The OECD ministers, meeting in Paris, agreed with Trumka on the widening gap between the rich and the rest. But they said globalization and technological change cause it.

They also didnt mention its threat to democracy or to workers. And they didnt endorse worker power through unionization or any other way as part of their package of solutions.

Instead, they said OECD nations, including the U.S., should enact policies that support skills, innovation, long-term investment and inclusive growth.

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Richard Trumka: Widening income inequality threatens democracy worldwide - People's World

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I didnt think it was a great day for the media, said Caddell. However, if you watched some of the other cablenews networks, youd think this was a disaster for Trump. It was anything but. He went on to call out the media for pursuing a political agenda, as opposed to the truth, saying that media today is actually a danger to democracy.

The media really took it on the nose, he went on, pointing out that Trump was not lying about the three times he claims Comey told him he personally was not under investigation. How come that didnt leak out? That is an interesting question because enough people knew on Capitol Hill, and it tells me that it was the media. And this was really the chilling part, that they have theirnarrative agenda, that Trump is in collusion, Trump is this, and Trump is that, and hes under investigation. They did not want to challenge that narrative.

They werent reporting facts, continued Caddell. They were reporting sources who would give them statements that would contribute to their anti-Trump narrative. This is not a press. This is a propaganda machine. Its full speed against the president.

Caddellsaid he could turn to almost any network and predict itscoverage, If Trump walked on water, theyd say he couldnt swim.

They are so negative, as they were in the campaign, he went on. They havent let up, and they have invested themselves in a political result, not in telling the truth, and that is a danger to democracy.

Caddell said the press has damaged the very institution of the press by having decided to bring down a president versus report the truth, and Democrats are falling right into the path with them.

As for Trump and Comey, Caddell said, Comey basically vindicated him, first of all, on the question if there was collusion, or even on the Flynn matter whether there was obstruction, and it just doesnt hold, he continued. Obviously, Mueller wouldnt let him testify if he thought there was an obstruction case.

Added Caddell, Comeys behavior is just bizarre. This man really believes that he is a demigod when it comes to the law. He keeps changing the goal lines. His weakness, which he confessed to, but I think it was more a device than a critical perception, whether it was with Loretta Lynch, when she asked him to conform to the Clinton campaign, which I thought was a revealing comment and opened up a lot of other doors, when he talked about his own leaking, volunteered how he had leaked and what he had done with those memos, I thought that was just really strange. His criticism of the media, he basically denied their stories. Hes basically a very angry man, and I thought the White House handled Comey terribly, but thats neither here nor there.

Caddell stated, He was the one in the meetings, and he never raised a protest, and then he said a sentence that I was stunned by. He said, Idid it because I gavemy friend the memo to give to the New York Times because I thought weneeded a special counsel. Heres a man who wouldnt have a special counsel or wouldnt even investigate the IRS stuff, a person who didnt do it with Hillary Clinton, particularly in terms of the Clinton Foundation, and yet it was pointed out to him by a couple of the senators, you know, basically he gave her a whitewash. He wants to do this with Trump. I thought that was devastating and puts him in a very precarious place.

Caddell added, It chills me to think that this person was running the FBI.

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Caddell: Dishonest Anti-Trump Media Have Become 'Danger to Democracy' - Breitbart News

Flying blind.

Thesocial mediagiants based in the U.S. may soon face a new attack in Europe: There's a perception among activists and officials that the basis of their business model -- targeted advertising -- can be a threat to democracy.

In a speech on Wednesday, Commissioner Margrethe Vestager -- who, as the top European Union antitrust official, has been thenemesis of U.S. tech companies such as Google and Apple-- laid out her problems with the way social networking changes people's political behavior. Oneof her complaints is familiar and much-discussed: Facebook and its peers tend to sort people into political and ideological filter bubbles and silos, destroying, as Vestager sees it, the chances of meaningful debate. The other has received less media attention. It concerns political ads and, generally, campaigns' social messaging. Vestager:

If political ads only appear on the timelines of certain voters, then how can we all debate the issues that they raise? How can other parties and the media do their job of challenging those claims? How can we even know what mandate an election has given, if the promises that voters relied on were made in private?

There are reasonable arguments against both of Vestager's complaints. Long before social networks, people have grouped together on the basis of compatible views; confirmation biases, too, are as old as human society. The social networks merely reflect reality and make it more palpable. As for targeted messages, old campaigning instruments, such as direct mailings and phone calls, also delivered private messages to potential voters, and the media usually parsed them -- just as they parse modern campaign activities on social platforms. It's actually become easier because everyone is on Facebook and Twitter.

Vestager, however, is on to something. The old tools allowed for rather generic targeting -- say, by voting or campaign donation history. Modern campaigns try to target messages using people's private data or even psychological profiles created on the basis of social network and browsing activity. That's not necessarily effective -- I've argued that it isn't -- but it means certain voters get ads and messages that they wouldn't have chosen to receive.

Imagine I'm a social media junkie for whom Facebook is the primary news source, as for about two-thirds of Americans and a fifth of Europeans.I see a political ad because someone -- or, most likely, an artificially intelligent entity -- has profiled me in a certain way, not because I made a donation to a certain party or voted for a specific candidate in the last election.Unless another algorithm profiles me differently, I don't see the other parties' responses to the content with which I've been plied. I have no idea what the party that advertises to me has promised people in different target groups. I have less of an idea of the campaigns parties are running than if I watched TV like a 20th century voter.

At the same time, Facebook doesn't release any data about what campaigns do on its platform. In a countrythat hasn't removed campaign spending limits as the U.S. effectively did withCitizens United, that makes it hard to check what they spend on ads. Facebook's position is that it's the campaigns' responsibility to follow their countries' laws, and that a user has full control over which ads are shown to him or her. The former is irrelevant to the task of checking campaigns' self-reporting. Thelatteris only true to a degree: On Facebook, you can opt out of certain ads, but algorithms will still decide how they will be replaced.

In the run-up to Thursday's U.K. election, a group called Who Targets Merecruited 10,000 volunteers to install a browser extension that registers targeted messages, ranging fromFacebook videos to Google search ads. The group calls them "dark ads" because they are so hard to monitor: They've been targeted to specific local constituencies, gender and age groups.

Last year's U.S. election led to pressure on the social networks to crack down on fake news stories and the bot networks that spread them. Facebookresponded byintroducing well-publicized mechanisms for reporting likely fake stories and having them fact-checked. During the recent French presidential election, it said it also suspended 30,000 fake accounts to stop them from spreading false stories.None of that really fixes the filter bubble problem -- people will still believe what they want to believe, and if they mistrust mainstream media, they are likely to discount fact-checkers' efforts, too. So the pressure is still on for a more pertinent response, but it's not clear what that could be -- short of having human editors remove stories deemed to be fake, something the networks will resist because it's contrary to their self-perception as neutral platforms.

If a regulatory backlash starts against political targeting, though, it's clear what the social networks might be required to do. Regulators could order them to disclose what messages campaigns are using and how much they are paying to circulate them. In an extreme scenario, they could even ban paid political advertising on social networks, arguing, as Vestager did in her speech, that politics is different from business, so rules for targeted messaging should be different to protect democracy.

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In a manifesto earlier this year, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote about moving relationships and social structures formed on the networks into the offline world."Thesechanges have been so fast that I'm not sure our democracy has caught up," Vestager said in her speech. One can be sure European regulators will choose to slow down the development of Zuckerberg's vision rather than rewrite campaigning rules to catch up with it.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mike Nizza at mnizza3@bloomberg.net

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Democracy Never Faced a Threat Like Facebook - Bloomberg - Bloomberg